Skip to main content

Blackbird

Summerhall, Edinburgh
Four stars
It's almost a decade since David Harrower's relentless study of psychosexual politics between a fifty something man and the woman he had a sexual relationship fifteen years earlier when she was twelve premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival. Then, it broke taboos, however ambiguous its stance. Now, as the Hawick-based Firebrand company revive it for a mini tour of intimate spaces, in a post Jimmy Savile climate where 'paedo' is a standard playground insult and the vagaries of 1970s liberalism are being thrown back in their apparent advocates faces, Blackbird looks more troublingly relevant than ever.

Yet there's nothing exploitative when Romana Abercromby's Una bursts in on Greg Wagland's Ray at his work-place in Richard Baron's unflinchingly intimate production. Rather, there's an underlying sense of unfinished business, even as the mess the pair made of each other's lives seems to be summed up in the discarded pizza boxes on the floor. Una's girlishness comes alive when she spins on a broken swivel-chair, though her lengthy spewed-up confessional later suggests that girlishness has been corrupted forever. After initial terror of his past life being exposed, Ray too recognises the bond that lingers as they edge towards a damaging reconciliation.

With the lights up on the audience throughout, nothing is hidden on either side of the experience. Yet, despite the up close and personal scale of the action, it never feels small. There are moments, in fact, when the orchestrated linguistic ricochets of action and consequence feel positively operatic. Only the scenes of sex and violence need to be more unhinged in a doomed love story with an excess of complications laid bare even as it dares you to take sides.

The Herald, February 28th 2014


ends
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more